Illuminating the E-Commerce Marketing Mix

Author: Benjamin Dominique Klink

Language: English (nur als PDF-Datei erhältlich)

E-Commerce has disrupted retailing and continues to capture market shares worldwide. At the same time, marketing tools have multiplied due to rapid advances in marketing technology. These developments have profound implications for managing the marketing-mix in an e-commerce context, posing substantial challenges to marketing executives. The scientific literature on marketing tools and their effectiveness in ecommerce is unfortunately highly fragmented and therefore limited in its ability to provide sound guidance concerning an integrated e-commerce marketing mix. This dissertation therefore aims to illuminate the e-commerce marketing mix. Towards this end, it, first, systematically reviews the literature on online patronage, confirming distinct fragmentation and conceptual confusion. It collates the research on patronage in e-commerce and develops an integrative conceptualization to aid future research. Second, it comprehensively identifies and intersubjectively categorizes currently available marketing tools in e-commerce. On that basis, it conceptualizes an ecommerce mix taxonomy comprising 62 archetypical marketing tools in ten dimensions. The e-commerce mix framework may aid, debias, and guide managerial decision-making and spark and inform scholarly debate. It then, third, meta-analytically assesses e-commerce mix effects on online patronage, synthesizing the empirical evidence of over 17’000’000 observations extracted from 602 individual studies. Thereby enhancing our understanding of firm-controlled levers’ impact on online patronage. The results provide valuable evidence on the comparative effectiveness of marketing tools, making findings particularly relevant for implementation decisions and benchmarking purposes in practice. Last, it uncovers, describes, and explains the competitive advantage and strategic relevance of online retailer brand equity. The qualitative study reveals a strong link between online retailer brand equity and market share. Findings highlight the importance of a long-term perspective in online retailing and complement the results of the meta-analysis.